BEST OF THE NET 2023; Essay in THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2018;
(cited in BAE 2015, 2016, 2020, 2022); PUSHCART poetry finalist
Annual Literary Contest
April 1 – June 1, 2024
Marjan Kamali
$1,000
Fiction Prize, Judge
Marjan Kamali, born in Turkey to Iranian parents, spent her childhood in Kenya, Germany, Turkey, Iran, and the United States. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley, Columbia University, and New York University. She is the bestselling author of The Lion Women of Tehran, The Stationery Shop, and Together Tea and the 2022 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Award. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty languages. Marjan lives with her family in the Boston area.
Andrea Cohen
$500
Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize, Judge
Andrea Cohen is the author of eight books of poetry, including The Sorrow Apartments (Four Way Books, 2024). Other collections include Everything, Nightshade, Unfathoming, Furs Not Mine, Kentucky Derby, Long Division, and The Cartographer’s Vacation. Her poems and stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Threepenny Review, The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The New Republic, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere.
Awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship and several fellowships at MacDowell. Over the years, she has taught at The University of Iowa, Emerson College, UMASS-Boston, The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and Merrimack College, where she was the founding director of the Writers’ House. She directs the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, MA, and is currently teaching at Boston University.
Rajiv Mohabir
$500
Michael Steinberg
Nonfiction Prize, Judge
Poet, memoirist, and translator, Rajiv Mohabir is the author of four books of poetry including Whale Aria (Four Way Books 2023), Cutlish (Four Way Books 2021) which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and recipient of the Eric Hoffer Medal Provocateur. His poetry and nonfiction have been finalists for the 2022 PEN/America Open Book Award, the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry and in Nonfiction, the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction, and both second place and finalist for the Guyana Prize for Literature in 2022 (poetry and memoir respectively). His translations have won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the American Academy of Poets in 2020. He is an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Leela Corman
$500
Graphic Lit Prize, Judge
Leela Corman is a painter, comics maker, and educator. She is the creator of numerous works of autobiographical and fictional comics, including Victory Parade (Schocken-Pantheon, 2024), You Are Not A Guest (Fieldmouse Press, 2023), Unterzakhn (Schocken-Pantheon, 2012) and We All Wish For Deadly Force (Retrofit/Big Planet, 2016).
Rules & Guidelines
Previous judges have included Martha Collins, Andres Dubus III, Jennifer Haigh, Terrance Hayes, Robert Lopez, Celeste Ng, Jerald Walker, and Afaa Weaver.
FEE: $18.00/entry
GUIDELINES
- Cover sheet required with name, address, telephone number and email. Email and/or phone MUST be included to be considered. Please include cover sheet in the same file as the actual submission. Do not put your name on the manuscript itself. Final judges will be choosing on the basis of the quality of your work. Please indicate the genre of your piece next to the title.
- 12-point font, double-spaced, .DOC or .DOCX attachment. We accept online submissions only through Submittable. No emails please.
- Each entry: Fiction or Nonfiction: 25-page maximum, double-spaced; free-standing excerpts from books also accepted. Poetry: 3-poem maximum. Graphic Lit: Original artwork, multiple panels (no single image pieces), 1-6 pages preferred, maximum 8-10 pages, in JPG/PDF format.
- You may submit more than once but must pay a separate fee for each entry.
- You may submit simultaneously elsewhere, but please email us immediately if accepted at another journal.
- We will not accept previously published work. Solstice has first publication rights, but copyright reverts to you upon publication. We will publish the piece after the Summer Awards Issue in our Archives.
- If you won last year’s contest, you must skip a year before resubmitting to the contest, but we encourage you to submit work to Solstice for general publication.
- We will announce the winners, finalists, and editors’ choice approximately 6-8 weeks after the contest deadline.
- After announcing the winners, finalists, and editors’ choice, all contest submissions will be automatically considered for standard publication unless you indicate otherwise.
- The $18.00 entry fee must be paid online at the time of entry.
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